Converge guitarist/recording engineer/all-around wizard Kurt Ballou doesn’t make mistakes. He is meticulous in pretty much everything he does. Heck, he’s been the engineer and producer all of Converge’s records since 1998 (as well as about a hundred other records). The guy is no joke. And he just put out a drum sample pack that will rock your socks off in about 23 different ways (Yes, I counted).
In this first of five part video, Kurt gives us a run down on how the samples work. They work like any other drum sample library would, this particular one running through the (free) Kontakt Player. The drum samples are fired with MIDI, which makes it SUPER easy to learn and get working with right away. Â What’s better, Kurt hasn’t even touched these things with fancy effects. He left them as dry as could be to give the user as much control over the sound as possible. The samples even come with a ‘mic bleed’ function, which allows for the drum being played to not only get picked up from the mic directly on the drum, but which ever other mics picked up that sound when it was recorded, making the drums sound as natural as they can get. Kurt’s thought of everything!
Obviously, there’s WAY more to these things than can fit into this tiny article. So, do yourself a cool little favor and check out Kurt’s YouTube channel, Demo Vids, for the rest of the series, as well as the other wacky things he’s up to.
The Kurt Ballou Signature Series Drums can be bought from Room Sound. Get to computer drumming everybody!
